But natural gas can still get through the shale cap. A recent study analyzed the rate of escape of gas through shale caps. It was found to be far too rapid for acceptance by evolutionary theory. If the world were billions of years old, all the natural gas would already have escaped.

In contrast, geologists have already located 630 billion barrels [1,002 billion kl] of oil that can be recovered from offshore wells. But if our planet were older than 20,000 years, there would be no offshore oil of any kind to locate and recover through oil rigs.

The greater part of the earlier volcanism apparently occurred within a narrow band of time just after the Flood. If it had lasted longer, our world today would have a far larger amount of volcanic material covering its surface. Instead we find that the Deluge primarily laid down the sedimentary deposits.

But even today’s volcanoes are an indication of an early age for the earth. If even the present low rate of volcanic activity had continued for the long ages claimed by evolutionists for earth’s history, there would be far more lava than there now is. Only a young age for our world can explain the conditions we see on earth’s surface now.

Zircon crystals were taken in core samples from five levels of a very hot, dry 15,000-foot [45,720 dm] hole in New Mexico, with temperatures always above 313° C [595.4° F]. That is more than 200° C [392° F] hotter than the sea-level temperature of boiling water.

Radiogenic lead gradually leaks out of zircon crystals, and does so more rapidly as the temperature increases. But careful examination revealed that essentially none of the radiogenic lead had diffused out of that super-heated zircon. This evidence points strongly to a young age for the earth.

But, of course, the worldwide Flood, the existence of which is clearly established by rock strata and other geological evidence, would have been responsible for a massive amount of initial erosion of the falls.

There are a number of large waterfalls in the world which plunge into gorges; and, over the centuries past, these were dug out as the waterfall gradually eroded away the cliff beneath it. In each instance, the distance of the cut that has been made, in relation to the amount of erosion that is being made each year by the falls, indicates only a few thousand years since the falls began.

The Mississippi-Missouri river system is the longest in the world and is about 4,221 miles [6,792 km] in length. Because, below Cape Girardeau, flatland inundation along the Mississippi has always been a problem, over a hundred years ago, Congress commissioned *General Andrew A. Humphreys to make a survey of the whole area. It was completed in 1861. The English evolutionist, *Charles Lyell, had earlier made a superficial examination of the river and its delta and declared the river system to be 60,000 years old since, he said, the delta was 528 feet [1609 dm] deep.

But Humphreys showed that the actual depth of the delta was only 40 feet. Below that was the blue clay of the Gulf, and below that, marine fossils. His discovery revealed that the lower Mississippi valley used to be a marine estuary. Using Lyell’s formula for age computation, Humphreys arrived at an age of about 4,620 years, which would be approximately the time of the Genesis Flood.

Ur of the Chaldees was a seaport several thousand years ago. Today it is almost 200 miles [322 km] from the Persian Gulf. That distance was filled in as delta formation filled from the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. Archaeologists date the seaport Ur at 3,500 B.C. Assuming that date, the delta formed at 35 miles [56 km] for every 1000 years.

According to evolutionary theory, everything occurs at a uniform rate and the earth is billions of years old. If that is so, 80,000 years ago the Persian Gulf would have reached to Paris! At the same rate of delta formation, 120,000 years ago the Gulf of Mexico would have extended up through the Mississippi River—to the North Pole!

An excellent example of this is the topology of Monterey Bay, California. It is filled with steep underwater canyons—so steep that small avalanches occur on them quite frequently. (See *"Between Monterey Tides," National Geographic, February 1990, pp. 2-43; especially note map on pp. 10-11.) If the earth were as old as the evolutionists claim, all this would long ago have been flattened out.

the continents would have resulted in a minimum of 60 miles [96.6 km] of sediments, on the ocean floors, and closer to 100 miles [160.9 km].

The 60 miles [96.6 km] of ocean sediments needed by the evolutionists for their theory is hopelessly missing.

Of the 51 primary chemical elements contained in seawater, twenty could have accumulated to their present concentrations in 1,000 years or less, 9 additional elements in no more than 10,000 years, and 8 others in no more than 100,000 years. For example, the nitrates in the oceans could have accumulated within 13,000 years.

"Estimated old ages for the earth are frequently based on ‘clocks’ that today are ticking at very slow rates. For example, coral growth rates were for many years thought to be very slow, implying that some coral reefs must be hundreds of thousands of years old. More accurate measurements of these rates under favorable growth conditions now show us that no known coral formation need be older than 3,500 years (A.A. Roth, ‘Coral Reef Growth,’ Origins, Vol. 6, No. 2, 1979, pp. 88-95)."—W.T. Brown, In the Beginning (1989), p. 14.

The University of Arizona has a department that specializes in tree dating. *Edmund Schulman of its Dendrochronological Laboratory discovered a stand of still older trees in the White Mountains of California. These were bristlecone pines (Pinus longalva).

Beginning in 1978, Walter Lammerts, a plant scientist, spent several years working with bristlecone pine seedlings in their native habitat of Arizona. He discovered that the San Francisco Mountain region, in which they grow, has spring and fall rains with a very dry summer in between. Working carefully with the seedlings and giving them the same type of watering and other climatic conditions that they would normally receive,—he found that much of the time the bristlecone pines produce two growth rings a year. This is an important discovery, for it would indicate that the sequoias—not the bristlecone pines—are probably the oldest living things on earth.

Think of it! Today we have just ONE generation of the Sequoia gigantea! Both the parent trees and their offspring are still alive. There is no record of any tree or other living thing that is older than any reasonable date given for the Genesis Flood. In the case of the giant sequoias, there is no reason why they could not have lived for many thousands of years beyond their present life span.

For additional information on tree ring dating, see chapter 6, Inaccurate Dating Methods.

Much more information on mutations, including a more complete discussion of genetic load, will be given in chapter 10, Mutations.

(The information given in this section is somewhat paralleled by material to be found in Ancient Cultures and As Far Back as We Can Go, near the end of chapter 13, Ancient Man. Additional material will be found there.)

As is shown more fully in chapter 13, Ancient Man, the writings, language, and cultures of ancient mankind started off fully developed—but are not found to have begun until about 2000-3000 B.C.

(1) Early Egyptian Records. The earliest historical books are those of the Egyptians and the Hebrews. The historical dates assigned to the beginnings of Egyptian and Sumerian history are based primarily on king lists. The earliest records are the Egyptian king-lists, dating from about the First Dynasty in Egypt, between 3200 and 3600 B.C. But internal and external evidence indicates that these dates should be lowered. An Egyptologist writes:

The problem with First Dynasty dates is they are based on the king-lists of Manetho, an Egyptian priest who lived many centuries later, in 250 B.C. Manetho’s writings have only been preserved in a few inaccurate quotations in other ancient writings. Barton, of the University of Pennsylvania, points out the problem here:

It is difficult to obtain exact clarity when examining ancient Egyptian texts. A number of Egyptologists think that Manetho’s lists dealt not with a single dynasty—but with two different ones that reigned simultaneously in upper and lower Egypt. This would markedly reduce the Manetho dates.

Manetho’s king lists give us dates that are older than that of any other dating records anywhere in the world. But there are a number of scholars who believe that (1) the list deal with two simultaneously reigning sets of kings; (2) that they are not numerically accurate; and (3) that Manetho fabricated names, events, numbers, and history, as did many ancient Egyptian Pharaohs and historians, in order to magnify the greatness of Egypt or certain rulers. For example, it is well-known among archaeologists and Egyptologists that ancient Egyptian records exaggerated victories while never mentioning defeats. The Egyptians had a center-of-the-universe attitude about themselves, and they repeatedly colored or falsified historical reporting in order to make themselves look better than other nations around them.

In contrast, it is highly significant that well-authenticated Egyptian dates only go back to 1600 B.C.! Experts, trying to unravel Egyptian dating problems, have come to that conclusion.

Because cosmologists, chronologists, historians, and archaeologists heavily rely on Egyptian dates for their theories, Egyptian dating has become very important in dating the ancient world, and thus quite influential. This is because it purports to provide us with the earliest historical dates. There is evidence available that would definitely lower archaeological dates and bring them into line with Biblical chronology.

We planned to include a more complete study on this subject in chapter 21, Archaeological Dating, but we had to heavily reduce it for lack of space. However, you will find it in chapter 35 on our website, evolution-facts.org.

(2) The Sumerians. The Sumerians were the first people with written records in the region of greater Babylonia. Their earliest dates present us with the same problems that we find with Egyptian dates. *Kramer, an expert in ancient Near Eastern civilizations, comments:

(We might here mention that the carbon-14 date for these earliest Near Eastern civilizations is not 3000, but 8000 B.C. In chapter 6, Inaccurate Dating Methods, we will discover that radiocarbon dating seriously decreases in reliability beyond about 1500 years in the past.)

It is conservatively considered that the first books of the Bible were written by Moses c. 1510-1450 B.C. (The date of the Exodus would be about 1492 B.C.) Chronological data in the book of Genesis would indicate that Creation Week occurred about 4000 B.C., and that the date of the Flood was about 2348 B.C.

Some may see a problem with such a date for the Genesis Flood. But we are dealing with dates that are quite ancient. The Flood may have occurred at a somewhat earlier time, but it may also be that the earliest-known secular dates should be lowered somewhat, which is probably the case here. It is well to remember that, in seeking to corroborate ancient dates, we can never have total certainty about the past from secular records, such as we find in Egypt and Sumer.

A solar eclipse is strong evidence for the dating of an event, when ancient records can properly corroborate it.

The earliest Western-type script was the proto-Sinaitic, which appeared in the Sinai peninsula about 1550 B.C. This was the forerunner of our Indo-Aryan script, from which descended our present alphabet.

The records of ancient languages never go back beyond c. 3000 B.C. Philological and linguistic studies reveal that a majority of them are part of large "language families"; and most of these appear to radiate outward from the area of Babylonia.

For example, the Japhetic peoples, listed in Genesis 10, traveled to Europe and India, where they became the so-called Aryan peoples. These all use what we today call the Indo-European Language Family. Recent linguistic studies reveal that these languages originated at a common center in southeastern Europe on the Baltic. This would be close to the Ararat range. *Thieme, a Sanskrit and comparative philology expert at Yale University, gives this estimate:

For more information on languages, see chapter 13, Ancient Man.

It is thought that the period between 1650 and 1850 would be a typical time span to analyze population growth prior to our present century, with its many technological advantages. One estimate, based on population changes between 1650 and 1850, provides us with the fact that at about the year 3300 B.C. there was only one family!

The rate of world population growth has varied greatly throughout history as a result of such things as pestilences, famines, wars, and catastrophes (floods, volcanoes, earthquakes, and fires). But with all this in mind, estimates generally focus on 300 million as the population of the earth at the time of Christ. Based on small-sized families, from the time of the Flood (c. 2300 B.C.) to the time of Christ, the population by that time would have been about 300 million people.

Men dream up theories, and then they call it science.

The young earth evidence is powerful. As discussed in this chapter, (1) ultraviolet light has only built up a thin layer of moon dust; (2) short half-life radioactive non-extinct isotopes have been found in moon rocks; (3) the moon is receding from earth at a speed which requires a very young earth;—and on and on the solid evidence goes, throughout the remainder of the chapter you have just completed. Read it again. It is solid and definite. (4) The lack of ancient human records on solar eclipses is alone enough to date man’s existence on the earth. Men are so intelligent that, in various places on earth, they have always kept written records—yet such records do not exist prior to about 4300 years ago.

1 - Working with your class, make some tree ring samples and date them.

2 - Do you live near any of the types of evidences listed in this chapter? Name them.

3 - On a map of the world, find where some of the things which are evidences of a young earth are located.

4 - Out of all the evidences given in this chapter, which show that our planet is quite young? Which five do you consider to be the best? Memorize them, so you can later tell them to others.

5 - Which five do you consider to be the most surprising? Why?

6 - Why is it that no historical records of any kind go back beyond only a few thousand years B.C.?

7 - Scientists were certain that there should be an extremely thick layer of dust on the moon. Why did they find almost no dust on the moon?

8 - List seven of the strongest reasons from the other planets that indicate a youthful age for our solar system.

9 - List three of the best evidences from our moon that our world is only a few thousand years old. Which one do you consider to be the best? Why?

10 - Which evidence from natural gas and oil do you consider to be the best? Why?

11 - Why do evolutionists find it necessary every few years to keep dramatically increasing the supposed age of the earth and the universe?

12 - How many of the large number of evidences given in this chapter would be sufficient to prove that the earth is not very old?

13 - Why is the decay of earth’s magnetic field such a powerful argument in favor of a young earth only a few thousand years old?

14 - Write a report on one "early earth" evidence (that the earth is not millions of years old) which especially interested you. After completing it, explain it orally in class.